Conventionally, there has been proposed an optical adapter comprising a first housing, a second housing, and a sleeve holder assembly (see Patent Literature 1).
The first housing is substantially hollow prism-shaped, and includes a pair of guides. The pair of guides are each long plate-shaped, and extend parallel to each other in the same direction.
The second housing is substantially rectangular parallelepiped-shaped. The second housing has a central portion formed with a hole for accommodating a split sleeve, one holder of the sleeve holder assembly, and a ferrule of one optical connector. Further, the second housing has opposite side surfaces formed with a pair of guide grooves for guiding the pair of guides of the first housing.
The sleeve holder assembly comprises a pair of sleeve holders and the split sleeve.
The pair of sleeve holders each have the same shape, but are assembled to each other such that one is inverted from the other. Each sleeve holder has a holder and a supporter. The holder holds the split sleeve. The supporter has a substantially rectangular shape, and is integrally formed with the holder.
To assemble this optical adapter, the split sleeve is held by the pair of sleeve holders, and then the sleeve holder assembly is assembled by engaging the sleeve holders with each other.
Next, the sleeve holder assembly is fitted into an opening of the first housing. As a result, the one sleeve holder of the sleeve holder assembly is accommodated in the first housing, and the other sleeve holder of the sleeve holder assembly protrudes out of the first housing.
To optically connect the optical connectors with each other using this optical adapter, first, the optical connectors are fitted to the first housing and the second housing, respectively. At this time, a ferrule of the first optical connector is inserted into the one sleeve holder of the sleeve holder assembly mounted to the first housing.
Next, the first housing and the second housing are fitted to each other. At this time, the guides of the first housing are guided by the guide grooves of the second housing, respectively, whereby fitting the first housing and the second housing to each other is normally performed.
When the first housing and the second housing are fitted to each other, a ferrule of the second optical connector connected to the second housing is inserted into the other sleeve holder of the sleeve holder assembly, and is brought into abutment with the ferrule of the first optical connector. As a result, both of the optical connectors are optically connected.